May 8, 2023
A series of middle-aged men mull their regrets in this wistful collection from Porter (The Theory of Light and Matter). “Rhinebeck” traces the sad life of Richard, who moved to Upstate New York 20 years earlier with his college friends David and Rebecca, a married couple. He spends each day at David and Rebecca’s restaurant, as the couple makes surreptitious plans to move to Austin, Tex., afraid Richard will feel abandoned. In “Breathe,” Gavin fails to react when his five-year-old son, Ian tumbles into a pool. Someone else rescues Ian, and later, Gavin worries Ian has health problems from the water that got into his lungs, while Ian chafes at the attention (“I’m not a baby,” he tells his father). Some of the stories play out over a few pages, such as “Lime,” about a man who receives a lime tree from an artist named Lorena and comes to believe that keeping the tree alive will somehow prevent Lorena’s fifth marriage from failing. There’s pathos in these stories, but the similar situations and narrow range of emotions tend to wear thin. Though polished, this doesn’t leave much of an impression.